In June 2020, Wirecard admitted that €1.9 billion of its cash didn't exist. Days later, the company's COO got on a private jet and disappeared.

Wirecard was supposed to be Germany's answer to Silicon Valley: a fintech in the DAX blue-chip index, worth more than €24 billion, briefly more valuable than Deutsche Bank. It was mostly fake. This is how the fraud actually worked, and why it held up for ten years.

Inside the episode: the third-party acquiring scheme that invented the profits, the forged bank letters that covered the hole, the auditors at EY who never once called the bank to confirm the money, and the German regulator that investigated the journalists instead of the company. Plus what happened to CEO Markus Braun, the roughly 50,000 shareholders who were wiped out, and COO Jan Marsalek, who is now wanted by Interpol and accused of running a Russian spy ring out of Moscow.

The wild part isn't the spy ring. It's how boring the answer is.

A note on the legal status: this episode covers open matters. Markus Braun is on trial in Munich, denies wrongdoing, and as of mid-2026 there is no verdict. Jan Marsalek is a fugitive and has never stood trial; the account of his intelligence work comes from investigative reporting and a UK trial of others.

New stories regularly. Headphones on.

The conversation delves into the collapse of Barings Bank, the rise of Nick Leeson, the failure of basic controls, and the lessons learned from this catastrophic event. It explores the deceptive practices, the impact of the Great Hanshin Earthquake, and the aftermath of the collapse. The key takeaways include the failure of basic controls and the danger of allowing one person to mark their own homework.

Takeaways

• Failure of basic controls
• One person allowed to mark their own homework

Chapters

• 00:00 The Collapse of Barings Bank
• 09:06 The Back Office and Segregation of Duties
• 14:11 The Deception and Forgeries
• 21:33 The Great Hanshin Earthquake
• 27:26 The Collapse of Barings Bank